On Sat, 25 Apr 2020 18:23:07 -0400, "David Horner" <ds2horner@...> said:

| First some observations from the revised LMUL.
| *1 The format for a given SLEN and SEW is the same for all LMUL>=1
| *2 LMUL=n is equivalent to LMUL=2 * n with vl < 1/2 vlmax at that level,
| for n=1,2,4.
| *3 Doubling SEW halves the number of elements in the same number of
| register bits, and visa versa..

| The first provide the benefits that quad or higher widening with ESEW <=
| SLEN stays in data lanes.
|     (resolving an ugly characteristic of quad widening.)

| The combined these leads to a realization that vl is the determinant of
| the register group size.
| If vsetvli were separately provided the number of physical registers to
| calculate vl, LMUL>1 is eliminated.

Hmm, LMUL _is_ the number of architectural registers to allocate.

| The format for LMUL=1/2
|      - does not align with LMUL=1 complicating mixed width instructions.

I believe it does align.

I don't understand the issue you're trying to address below. I think
the new scheme already has the properties you're trying to attain.

Krste

|     - is wasteful of space
|     - but it does reduce the active portion of registers, that could
| benefit renaming machines (if they rename at sufficient low granularity).

| Noting that point *2 could be extended into LMUL=1/2 and in conjunction
| with point *3:

|      Widening operations to LMUL=1 can equivalently be sourced from
| LMUL=1 where
|          source is 1/2 SEW of widened result and
|         vl is length of widened result.

| Rephrased relative to source SEW:

|      At LMUL=1, widening operations
|             take source of SEW width elements and length vl,
|              and create widened result as LMUL=1 with 2*SEW and length
| of vl.

| I recommend this uniformity apply through "fractional modes" that
| allocate 1/2, 1/4, etc. of the physical registers bits.

| A specific optimization, such as dynamic VLEN can address the renaming
| micro-architectures efficiency issue.

| Instead I recommend "fractional modes" that fill 1/2 of each SLEN before
| moving on to next physical register, with one mode using the first half
| and the other mode the other half.
| Similar to proposed in #412  Fractional vtype field vfill – Fractional
| Fill order and Fractional Instruction eLement Location.

| As that proposal was designed to be added to the previous LMUL modes, I
| am working through details of such encoding now for a revised proposal.

| However, in the interim I thought these considerations might be helpful
| as is.

|